QUEEN ARRIVES BACK HOME

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30764, 31 May 1965, Page 13

QUEEN ARRIVES BACK HOME

(N Z.P.A -Reuter — Copyright) PORTSMOUTH. May 30. The Queen steps ashore at the ancient naval town of Portsmouth today after her 11-day, history-making State visit to West Germany.

The trip, the first to Germany by a British monarch for half a century, was seen by many as a step towards a new era of friendship between the two nations. The royal yacht Britannia will berth shortly after midday (11 p.m. N.Z. time) after the trip from Hamburg. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh will lunch aboard the yacht before the Duke flies by naval helicopter to Windsor Castle, 30 miles west of London. The Queen will be given an official welcome in Portsmouth by her representative in the County of Hampshire Lord Ashburton, and civic leaders.

She will then travel by train to London, where the Prime Minister will welcome her before she is driven home to Buckingham Palace. Meanwhile, in Bonn the royal visit to West Germany was being hailed as the happy ending to the war-torn chapters of Anglo-German relations of the last 50 years. German newspapers and officials were talking excitedly about the dawn of a new era of friendship between the two countries.

The Royal visit gave Germans back a piece of their history, said one newspaper. “It has made them prouder,” it said. Everywhere she went, to the cheers of hundreds of thousands. the Queen reminded Britons an-l Germans of their common ancestry and urged them to cultivate the things that linked them.

She constantly talked of her own family ties with the German princely houses, thus recalling a chapter of history often obscured by events of the last 50 years.